


tsukishima kei and the know-hows of living and loving

by rogueseas



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Character Study, Childhood Friends, Kuroo Tetsurou is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Musician Tsukishima Kei, Post-Break Up, Slice of Life, Smoking, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings, Tsukishima Kei is Figuring Things Out, and this happened, i wanted it to be more centric on kei figuring things out, mentions of other haikyuu characters, no betas we die like men, university students in crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueseas/pseuds/rogueseas
Summary: “how’ve you been, tsukki?” he says, and there’s a smile in his voice. kuroo tetsurou pulls away and his eyes are clear as he gazes into kei’s eyes, smiling gently. and kei can’t help but hold his breath in.it dawns on kei, then, that this was what it was. kei realizes it’s because it’s been such a long time that he’d forgotten. silly, silly, stupid kei. because kuroo has always been touchy, because kei has always been a friend before a lover, because that’s what kei was and all that he amounts to now—not even a hard enough thought it would have hurt the older’s head, not even an awkward smile, not even one step of hesitation in the same way kei had stayed up all night wondering how he was going to face this version of kuroo he hadn’t seen since their break up three years ago.because kuroo is everything but hesitation. he wavers so rarely and even then, he never lets anyone see it, save for a few. but it’s been such a long time and kei is no longer part of those few somes. so, one hug, keeping kei close like all the other times he did, and yet, this time, kei feels so far from him.“good,” he finally murmurs back, only just fast enough to not have the conversation turn awkward, “i’ve been good. you?”
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Tsukishima Akiteru & Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 10
Kudos: 91
Collections: Luna & Noir: KuroTsuki Fest 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on prompt #032!  
> dialogue: "i was doing just fine, you know? until you walked through that door like you hadn't broken my heart and my mother started asking about you again."
> 
> this was a long, long journey. i hope you get something from it, i hope you enjoy it somehow.

inside the one-bedroom apartment where kei has lived for the last three years since moving to tokyo to attend university, the only things that are his are the frames adorning the wall by the entryway (due to his mother’s insistence), the books on the study table and the dinosaur figurines on the shelf inside his bedroom, his clothes and toiletries and the food in the fridge, the ashtray on the balcony, the vinyl player, and the cello case resting in one corner of his bedroom.

aside from that, all of the things there—the tables, the chairs, the bedframe, the fridge, the posters, the color choice of the walls, all of it—were his brother’s and frankly, kei doesn’t really mind. even prior to moving into an apartment previously occupied by his brother, kei had grown up sharing his life with akiteru—his old clothes, shoes, lunchbox, books, _rosin_ —nearly _everything_ came from his brother. so no, kei doesn’t really mind.

the walls are cream, there is a small, barely noticeable dent on the entryway (that his brother humorously recounts as an unfortunate tumble after drinking out too late one night and forgetting there was another step up after taking off his shoes), there’s a poster of a band akiteru used to like hanging on a wall inside the bedroom (that kei never bothered removing), and often times when kei woke up early, he’s able to see the sun rise on the balcony of the apartment and remembers the first few months of akiteru talking about it over dinner visits when kei was much, much younger (and pretending he wasn’t listening).

and in living inside the very place his brother had cherished once, he remembers what it was like to be with akiteru, even if they stopped sharing their lives nearly a whole decade ago. _and then_ , he also witnesses the remnants of the path that akiteru took when he began forging his own life and stopped holding kei’s hands.

the world moves and changes and so does everything else, even kei.

(even kei. the walls are his brother’s but he has his ashtray, his books, his clothes. at the end of the day, kei is not only akiteru’s brother, not merely a musician who stripped his instrument of its purpose, not merely a remnant of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens.

kei has been stumbling through life from one mistake to the next for a long, _long_ time now, figuring why things go right and wrong and wrong and _wrong_. but he’s twenty-one, the world is moving, and there’s a difference between stumbling and _crashing_ ; and kei has been counting his mistakes long enough (and _enough_ for this lifetime and the next, every night) to begin figuring out how things can finally go right and right and _right_ the next time around.

so no, kei doesn’t really mind and he’s almost certain things will be okay.)

i.

kei wonders as his phone rings loudly in the silence, if there must have been a deity out there that he’d angered for anyone to call him at this time of night. the light emanates off it, illuminating his bedroom in what would almost seem like divine punishment for someone who only just headed to bed two or so hours ago.

he tries to ignore it. regardless of him hoping it would stop, it keeps on ringing anyway.

he doesn’t bother checking the time as he answers the call—that required more coordination; besides, having to fumble around blindly for his glasses seemed like an accident just waiting to happen. he sits up and places himself in a more upright position so that he feels more alert for whoever it was who was calling.

“hello?”

“tsukki!” immediately, he feels a dull, aching sensation in his head approach as he rubbed his eyes.

“what?”

“don’t be like that! i have something really important to tell you!”

“and what would be so important that you thought it was appropriate to call me at this time in the morning, bokuto-san?”

he feels the older pout from his side of the city even when he lived halfway across it, _how is that even possible,_ “aw! but it’s nearly five am and i’m on my jog, tsukki! i was just so excited!” _huh,_ so he’d slept at least an hour.

“right,” kei says, rubbing his face as he feels the exhaustion seep back into his bones, draining _nearly_ all the irritation, “what was so important, bokuto-san?”

bokuto laughs enthusiastically on his side, excited, “i’ll tell you over dinner tonight! so, don’t for—”

kei hangs up, turning his phone off as he tosses it back on the bedside table before crashing back into bed. _god_.

his alarm clock rings at exactly 6:30 am. he opens his eyes, staring at the ceiling as he allowed the contraption to ring loudly in the room. _any longer and you’ll be late,_ he notes to himself quietly. _get up_.

he calculates the time inside his head; if he forgoes breakfast, he’d still have enough time to lie down another fifteen minutes, take a bath, and go to school without rushing. _this is why it’s a better idea if you lived with us_ , he hears keiji’s voice echo almost immediately in the silence.

5 minutes _, do i really have to go_ , 4, _your grades won’t make itself,_ 3, _this bed is so warm,_ 2\. his phone beeps, _good morning, kei. what time will you be by for dinner today?_ keiji asks—certain, that kei was already awake (but perhaps not aware he was dawdling)—because he’s a decent person, unlike his other half; it is the one thing that pushes kei out of bed. he sits up and replies, _around 7,_ and heads for the shower.

**a memory:**

at nineteen, kei strips himself of everything that he is, _was,_ is, _was._ he quits the cello the summer before his freshman year in university, standing on the cusp of something great (greater than even himself, they’d said)—there was a time when kei was and all he could ever be (and kei used to think that was all that he needed to be) was his cello—and lets it go.

because ultimately, that’s what kei has grown accustomed to doing—letting go.

he doesn’t voice it aloud, so there’s no response. if asked, he would describe it to be a childhood toy—one you never really imagined you could live without. but then one day you did, until another day passed, and another, until you realized you could breathe and live life fine even without it. he strips himself of the one thing he held onto even when he let everything, everyone else go and no one makes so much as a noise.

the world continues to move and kei convinces himself he’ll be okay.

everyone stops expecting of him to be this, this _figure_ everyone thought he’d become at this age and kei lets everything _be_ —whether that be letting everything fall into place or burst asunder right in front of him, he merely turns his back and _lets_ the world go.

kei teaches himself the definition of _nothing_ at nineteen, takes off everything that he knew he was and accepts the new clothes he’s given. tsukishima kei, archaeology major, and nothing else.

he arrives in campus ten minutes before his morning meeting with the student council of the archaeology department; the meeting is just about to start as he enters the conference room. miya osamu, an upperclassman, quickly gestures for him to sit down on the vacant seat next to him while the others greeted him a quick ‘good morning’; he reciprocates, nodding his head quietly before settling down on his seat.

the agenda was about a museum exhibit project in collaboration with their department and was an annual event usually handled by sophomores, aided by their upperclassmen; which is why in the previous year, kei had been the one to head the project; which is also how it led up to how this year, it seemed that the lowerclassmen were planning to look to him for guidance (if the recurring meetings they’ve been trying to schedule with him the past few weeks were any indication).

nevertheless, he finds himself drifting in and out of the meeting, head aching just enough to distract him from engaging in the discussion. _you should sleep properly, kei,_ his brother’s voice echoes somehow, as a reminder, _and don’t forget your meals_. somewhere in the middle, miya osamu slips a toffee on the hand he’s resting on his lap, receiving a wink right after when he looks. kei’s mouth instinctively curves up into a small smile, but he keeps the toffee in his pocket for later before turning back (attempting to, at least) to the meeting.

later, miya osamu ruffles his hair before he exits the room in a hurry, his next class being far from where their meeting was held. kei lets him, even indulges in it.

the noise in the conference room is much louder outside of the meetings, most of them already having been acquainted the last couple of years because it was rare for any of them to leave the council after they entered. kei lets misaki hana, the student president, pull him into a conversation with other members about an exhibit held up in new york, which she saw over break. eventually, he leaves for class himself and finds himself having begun breathing a little easier.

he lets the day pass by without so much of a fuss, takes a short nap in the library during lunch (which turned out to be a great idea, although kei would never admit that to his brother) before heading back to class. by the time his classes ended, kei was already able to schedule meetings with his lowerclassmen, talk to his department head about his internship offers, and became free enough to study in the library well into the evening before the dinner in keiji and bokuto’s apartment.

_wru?_ a text from keiji appears five minutes before his arrival to his designated station, although it’s most likely bokuto who sent it.

 _fifteen minutes away,_ he replies.

_nice!_

when kei arrives to their doorstep and rings the doorbell, he didn’t really expect bokuto to nearly tackle him to the ground with a hug as he opened it (he really should have known better, given that this was bokuto koutarou and he _had_ just called him at five in the morning just a few hours before, but kei’s an idiot).

“keiji arrived like an hour ago from violin practice, and i didn’t have practice today! i trained, though,” bokuto fills in without being asked as kei removes his shoes, the older’s chin rests on kei’s shoulder with his arms wrapped around his waist. he moves to rest an arm around kei’s shoulders as they walk into the dining room, grinning happily as he presents kei to keiji.

“tsukki’s here!”

keiji turns to look at them briefly before turning away, focusing his attention back on cooking. “you alright, kei?” he begins, and when kei turns to bokuto, he realizes the older is more alert now too, also assessing kei’s demeanor for an answer; his grip loosening, tentative.

“hmm.” keiji hums and bokuto relaxes before seemingly making a decision as he turns and envelops him in a big hug, “ah, tsukki! we missed you! you should go live with us!”

if kei had to compare bokuto to anything, he’d say he reminded him of a big bear. because he was always exerting energy, he was always far too warm (but kei liked warm) and since he was an athlete, it was easy for his entire body to cover kei’s even if he were the tallest among all of them. across him, kei can feel keiji smile even as he had his back turned away from them.

soon enough, bokuto lets him go so he could set the table, the two forcing him to venture into the living room because keiji never lets him move a hand when he comes visit.

he sits on the couch and just as easily sees keiji’s violin case on one of the tables. he taps his fingers on his lap and turns his gaze up at the ceiling, letting himself sink into the couch. _hm_.

**a rumination:**

the dinners hadn’t originally meant anything. it was only because bokuto liked company, and he rarely had any days off that allowed him to be nearly as free as he was when they were in high school. keiji, too, was incredibly indulging when it came to bokuto. so, when bokuto proposed dinner nights with kei once a week in his and keiji’s apartment (or in kei’s apartment, on occasion), keiji had acquiesced and kei wasn’t allowed to decline.

sometimes, other guests would come over so it would be a small get-together, but oftentimes, it would be just him—an inside joke between their friend groups run that kei’s their adopted child. the only thing they needed to do was actually give kei the spare guest room and convince him to live with them permanently (they tried during his freshman year and they _still_ try occasionally). but, kei supposes, driving him home every time he dined with them (even if his own apartment was across the city) was already pretty domestic too.

kei has long realized it’s bokuto’s way of making sure kei doesn’t quite drift away like he had after the summer of kei’s graduation and he didn’t stay in contact.

(in his defense, he thought that by then, their responsibility towards him ceased the moment he graduated and _that_ happened ( _he_ gets them as collateral, kei lives with it, and that was fine, because bokuto and keiji had been his from the get-go anyway), there really wasn’t any need to keep in contact any longer so he merely stopped and held no grudge at all.

apparently, this sentiment was wrong since bokuto proceeded on barging into his apartment with keiji following behind, a bunch of strawberry-assorted snacks in hand, a week after the school year started and about four weeks since he stopped talking to them.

“we would’ve come sooner if coach let me, but,” bokuto pouts, “i wasn’t allowed to skip training and only came now, but forgive me, tsukki, i’m here now!” he exclaims, hugging kei close.

kei remembers the way his body so easily welcomed bokuto’s warmth, years of being beside him easing kei in a way that he didn’t really think would be possible if it were any other person. as he was hugged close, he found himself leaning into the warmth the older boy had to offer.

keiji talks to him later, when bokuto’s asleep on his bed, stomach full with strawberries.

“you’re not going to be able to kick us out of your life, kei. it’s not a temporary contract, we’re here for the long run.”

then he pulls kei close, and kei had to wonder how someone as cold as him could have friends with hands so warm that it almost feels like kei could become warm too.)

“so, about the important thing,” kei inquires as they’re halfway through their meal. bokuto pauses from eating, laying down his utensils as he beams. _was it really this important?_ beside him, keiji also pauses before turning to the older. kei doesn’t miss the cursory glance he makes towards kei before he’d turned to the older.

and almost as if in an attempt to make it feel like it wasn’t _that_ big of a deal, keiji announces it without warning.

“tetsurou’s coming home,” he says (a few moments after he and bokuto stared each other down). bokuto is quick to exclaim a complaint, _HEEEEEEEY_ , probably having wanted to be the one to tell him. _right_ , kei thinks as he grips his chopsticks a little tighter. _right_.

it wasn’t like kei didn’t see it coming. _ha!_ he was going to have to come home at one point, it was only temporary anyway—studying abroad, that is. it’s already been, what, three years? he reasons. it was only a matter of time. _right?_

“he’s coming back on friday!” bokuto’s voice booms and kei startles back into the conversation. bokuto is grinning and keiji is giving him a tentative smile.

a beat. and another. and kei knows that it’s already taken him a beat too long to respond.

“that’s good.”

bokuto’s smile falters a little, “aren’t you excited? we’ll be picking him up from the airport with ‘kaashi!”

“huh?” he asks, he feels himself almost detach from the conversation. he sets his utensils down and picks his glass up to drink, “i think you can do that well enough without me, bokuto-san.”

he watches bokuto turn to keiji before turning back to kei quickly, “no, i can’t! i have lots of things to talk about with kuroo on the way home and keiji still hasn’t gotten his license renewed, so you have to! you’ll drive, tsukki, you won’t have to talk at all.”

he gazes back, hesitant, if not at all completely sure he wanted to refuse.

“i think you have lots of other friends you can contact. ask tobio or something.”

“but tsukki!”

kei watches keiji touch bokuto’s forearm, which makes the latter pause, before focusing back on his food.

“let’s let him think about it first, hm?”

it’s quiet when the both of them drive him back to his apartment. although kei doesn’t miss the way bokuto occasionally glances at him from the rearview mirror. only keiji walks him to his door while bokuto quietly stays by the car, although he grins when kei looks back to him after they started walking away.

“it’s not your fault,” keiji explains, like kei didn’t understand. maybe some childish part of him hadn’t, “he just didn’t want to startle you any more than he already did tonight.”

“think about it, hm?” he says as he stops at kei’s front door, “he’d have missed you. it’s been a long time since we were all together.”

keiji reaches up to cup his cheeks, caressing them gently as he smiled softly.

“breakfast at the café the day after tomorrow like usual, okay? good night, kei.”

and then he’s gone.

it’s quiet when he enters his apartment, the moonlight shining through the window bright enough to illuminate the entire room. it’s also silent when he enters his bedroom, the only sound being the _thump_ as he throws himself into bed, face first, with a quiet _crash_.

_tetsurou’s coming home._

“home, huh.” he murmurs into his pillow.

he turns over to look at his ceiling, whose white bareness almost feels suffocating. at home, he’d had glow-in-the-dark stars his mom and aki installed when kei was only six. he never really did anything with the ceiling in this apartment, never really sure if he should. this wasn’t home, it wasn’t his to own. quietly, he glances around his bedroom and the expanse of the walls, the only thing he could call his own were the dinosaur figurines, the university notes on his study table, and then some.

silence. a beat, and another. _kuroo had felt like home once_ , his mind supplies, like a traitor. he laughs in reply, enveloping the room with the echoes of his self-mockery. _you don’t laugh like that, kei_ , kuroo would have said, his mind notes again.

kei scoffs. _what would he know?_ and tamps down what immediate thoughts he knew would follow.

unlike his living room, there was little to no light in his room, the curtain thick enough to cover what remaining light would shine through the small window. kei reaches upwards in the dark with his right arm. he’s not really reaching for anything, there was nothing to reach for after all. but he does anyway. he opens his palms and tries to grasp on something. quietly, he notes that there is nothing.

 _tetsu—kuroo always had his hand reached out to you_. just until that last moment.

it’s not like he hadn’t seen it coming. he had, kei had. unprepared was not something kei was usually associated with. and yet, all the same and _again_ after all these years, it’s kuroo tetsurou that has caught him off-guard.

 _kuroo tetsurou is coming home_. he rolls that over in his head once, twice, thrice, just enough until he lost count. _on friday_. it’s only friday of the previous week. _seven days._

he turns his body over again, giving up as he buries his head into his pillow.

sleep does not come.

**a memory:**

he meets all of them when he’s eleven.

akaashi keiji is the violinist who asks akiteru to accompany for him in a competition, and because the tsukishima household has their own music room and kei was still too young ( _i’m not!_ ) to be left alone, they end up practicing sometimes in kei’s house.

keiji was only twelve to kei’s eleven and since keiji so obviously admired his brother, kei found himself allowing space for keiji to coax him into playing for him and aki a few weeks after he started listening in to them practicing.

he comes to the concour and witnesses keiji win second place. and when he and his brother go to congratulate him with flowers, he finds two other older boys with him.

kei was tall for his age, even taller than keiji, but the two were still a little taller than him. they laughed with a volume unfitting for a music hall and held very big flowers that would have swallowed keiji whole if he held them.

kei watched keiji grin widely, eyes alight with joy as he proceeded to laugh openly over what they said. in his eyes, keiji was always very put-together—elegant in the way he held himself, forthright, but not rude, and usually never openly expressed himself unless he was playing. this version of keiji in front of him then, kei quietly thought to himself, was someone he didn’t know.

it’s only because akiteru tugs him forward that keiji finally sees him. and if it was even possible, he brightens up even more as he calls kei’s name and gestures for him to come closer. he accepts kei’s flowers with a gentle smile and presents kei, as though a newly-born pup, to his companions.

“this is kei! he’s tall but he’s only eleven and he plays the cello. he only plays the violin when forced to but he’s still better than me,” keiji introduces casually, as though that was appropriate, and kei sputters slightly, looking back at him in disbelief.

for a moment, his two companions felt like looming figures in front of him and kei only refuses to cower because he’s nearly just as tall as them.

but then, the both of them smile.

they introduce themselves as bokuto koutarou and kuroo tetsurou, the former gesturing madly at how amazing kei and keiji probably were while the latter tells him he wants to hear him play someday. kei finds himself exhaling in awe at the sheer amount of emotion that stirs in his chest at the realization that these three people, with both laughter bigger than anyone’s he’s ever seen and very, very nice smelling flowers, has welcomed them into their lives just like _this._

for the next years that followed, he watches the three attend every concert and every cello competition, handing him the biggest flowers and the warmest hugs. in turn, he starts playing the violin just a bit more to make keiji happy, attends his competitions with the other two, and learns how to squeeze the hands of the people who take his hand in theirs to keep it warm, to keep him safe.

(it’s ultimately keiji’s sentiment that convinces him. if only to preserve what friendship there used to be between them four, kei supposes pretending everything is completely alright can be fairly easy.)

ii.

 _it’s only seven in the evening,_ kei tells himself, _there’s still less than an hour left_ and kei still has just enough time to hightail it out of there and go back to his apartment to get the sleep he all but lost the past few days because of all his responsibilities in university, and well, _this._

instead, his feet remain obediently grounded on that one same spot, even as his right foot taps against the floor in agitation. his attention has been alternately tuning in and out the external noise being emitted around him. _it’s late_ , _why is this place so noisy?_ but he supposes it was always like this in the airport. everyone was always departing and meeting again, he supposes that allows for some noise, especially if the person you’re meeting again is someone you haven’t seen in three years, or longer. maybe.

in fact, kei feels like screaming himself.

“bro!” bokuto’s voice is just loud enough to alarm anyone standing a few feet away from him, and it startles kei out of his reverie.

he throws himself at the person who’d just arrived and keiji follows after him, the beginnings of a smile forming on his lips, only to glance quietly at kei in an attempt (he thinks) to beckon him forward. if keiji thinks that kei were any less stubborn than he was when he was seventeen, _well,_ he was wrong. so, he stays rooted on his spot, a good distance away from them three.

kei thinks, as he watches bokuto nearly smother kuroo tetsurou with a huge hug, there’s an advantage to bokuto being so massive because kuroo doesn’t quite see him just yet.

kuroo tetsurou grins widely at bokuto before pushing him away, laughing—and _oh_ , his voice sounds so familiar. and then he’s pulling keiji in, kissing his temple, as bokuto continues trying to hang off of him, and then he glances up, eyes tinged with unabashed joy from seeing both bokuto and akaashi again after a long study abroad, and meets eyes with kei himself.

kei had expected many things, long before keiji or bokuto even told kei kuroo was finally coming back home. he always thought that kuroo wouldn’t have wanted to see him, regardless of all the pretense that he wanted to stay friends, even when kei refused to answer his messages or never accepted the postcards that he sent through keiji. he thought kuroo would have been angry, sad, awkward. he thought, at the least, kuroo wouldn’t know what to do if he’d been faced with this version of kei that he hadn’t seen in years either. because that’s how kei felt, because kei has stayed up one _too many_ nights and he’s never figured out how to, _what to do_ when he’s faced with a situation like this, three long years after.

it was always just a matter of asking himself what he would do if he were ever faced with having to meet kuroo tetsurou again. and kei has thought of this so many times he’s lost count, but he has never thought of _this._

kuroo strides forward, easily getting bokuto off of him, wearing a wide smile that showed all of his teeth—one he always used to wear around them—as he pulls kei in a warm hug (kei wasn’t aware he was cold prior to this hug, he wonders how long he’s been cold). it lasts for one, _two, three, four, five, six—_

“how’ve you been, tsukki?” he says, and there’s a smile in his voice. kuroo tetsurou pulls away and his eyes are clear as he gazes into kei’s eyes, smiling gently. and kei can’t help but hold his breath in.

it dawns on kei, then, that _this_ was what it was. kei realizes it’s because it’s been such a long time that he’d forgotten. silly, silly, _silly, stupid, stupid kei._ because kuroo has always been touchy, because kei has always been a friend before a lover, because that’s what kei was and all that he amounts to _now_ —not even a hard enough thought it would have hurt the older’s head, not even an awkward smile, not even one step of hesitation in the same way kei had stayed up all night wondering how he was going to face this version of kuroo he hadn’t seen since their break up three years ago.

because kuroo is everything but hesitation. he wavers so rarely and even then, he never lets anyone see it, save for a few. but it’s been such a _long time_ and kei is no longer part of those few somes. so, one hug, one move too fast, keeping kei close like all the other times he did, and yet, this time, kei feels so, so far from him.

“good,” he finally murmurs back, only just fast enough to not have the conversation turn awkward, “i’ve been good. you?”

“great,” kuroo replies with a grin, loud and lively and beautiful. kei’s heart drops just a little as he reciprocates what he wishes looked like a sincere smile. “i’ve been really great!”

(“bro!” a massive body tackles him and tetsurou is quick to laugh as he hugs bokuto back. he turns to see keiji, quickly pulling him close to kiss his temple. and then, for a quick, _quick_ moment, he realizes kei is standing just a few meters away. blonde hair still just unruly enough but longer, the same cute nose, the same golden eyes.

tetsurou all but stumbles forward as he sees him, _fuck, he’s here._ _fuck._ he can’t get the grin off his face as he moves closer, closer, _closer._ tetsurou thinks this might be what resurrection feels like, as he pulls kei in and exhales.

 _tsukishima kei,_ he marvels quietly. there was no time for hesitation at all.)

“how was germany, bro?” bokuto says from the passenger seat as kei shifts gears to exit out of the parking area. beside kei, keiji is quietly listening to the conversation, chiming in once in a while.

“cold,” kuroo replies, laughing, “but it was fun, a lot of my classmates liked drinking out a lot. it’s easier to learn the language when you’re drunk off your ass.”

kei tunes them out as he focuses on the road, refuses to think too much.

“so, kei driving, huh?”

“our tsukki’s an adult now! twenty-one! wouldn’t you believe? before, he used to be _this_ tiny,” bokuto says, gesturing with his pointer finger and thumb as if kei hadn’t been the same height as them and even taller at sixteen, “and now he’s even driving.”

“i’ve been taller than all of you since i was a freshman in high school.” he says, deadpan, if only to prove a point. the two laughs, keiji even smiles.

luckily enough, they don’t really talk to him much nor about him, they head straight to bokuto and keiji’s apartment. by the time they make it there, kei is already mentally exhausted and he thinks keiji might have already noticed because he stops kei from getting out of the car, gesturing for him to just open his window.

“you guys go on ahead,” keiji tells them as they unload the last of kuroo’s luggage out of the trunk. he keeps his eyes firmly on keiji’s, refusing to look at the lingering presence that had stopped just a few meters away ~~because kuroo had always instinctively made sure kei was kept safe more than both bokuto and keiji ever did~~.

“i know it would be more convenient if i asked you to stay,” keiji begins, stooping low just enough to be face-to-face with kei as he rested his arms on the driver’s window, “and there’s enough room for the four of us in the apartment, but i feel like you might be more comfortable going back to your place than staying with us for tonight,” kei nods mutely, he doesn’t know what kind of face he’s showing but keiji’s softens and he smiles comfortingly, hands reaching forward to caress kei’s cheeks.

“i’ll just have bokuto pick up the car tomorrow afternoon, is that alright?” another nod. keiji only continues smiling before moving forward to press a kiss on kei’s forehead.

“message me when you’re home, please.” he says for the final time, ruffling kei’s hair as he pulls away.

it’s university, he wanted to say. he’d been in a meeting the entire afternoon and he had a test that morning. some things don’t fit perfectly into the council plans and he needs to stay up longer if he wanted things to feel like it could work out. it’s, he’s… tired. but it’s not kuroo, _no_ , he’s not the problem, he’s never the problem. _~~once, kei had been convinced he was every inch of everything that made things better.~~ _

“thanks, keiji.” he says instead. keiji just smiles and he waits (kei checks through the rearview mirror) until kei had been a considerable distance away until he started walking into the apartment. quietly, he notes that another figure lingers just a little longer before leaving as well.

**a memory:**

kei is fifteen, and kuroo, seventeen, when he first realizes he likes him. it wasn’t so much a specific memory as it was a _thunk_ in the head, or something. a realization, _oh_ , as kuroo laughed his head off after he and bokuto did a high five with their brightly-painted asses ( _it’s an ass five, kei!)_ the summer before kuroo and bokuto’s final year in high school.

he and keiji had been preparing in the older’s house for a concert, he remembers, and kuroo and bokuto had called them into the front yard, covered in paint from a spontaneous paint fight (they were painting bokuto’s house) and had their asses colored orange and yellow, respectively.

kei remembers laughing with keiji, briefly forgetting the scores and just trying their best to run away from the olders’ hands which were plastered with wet paint. kuroo’s laughter echoes loudly as he catches kei and covers him in yellow paint, and it _clicks_. _oh. oh, i like him._

he drives back in relative silence, lets the noise of the bustling city trickle into his head as he made his way back to his apartment. the radio is turned off and it only emphasizes the sounds of the cars moving past him, the bright, led lights all around tokyo in proof that it doesn’t sleep, kei doesn’t have to open the window to know how cold it is.

the world moves around him just like this and kei moves along with it—just not as fast as everyone else, just not as certain as everyone else.

it’s a bit quiet in the two weeks that followed, his entire schedule preoccupied with back-to-back meetings on exhibits, research papers, and the impending doom of incoming midterms in the weeks about to follow. he spends all his time either in the library or the conference rooms and finds himself having to cancel the weekly dinners temporarily (bokuto understands easier these days, kei is impossible to convince whenever this part of the semester comes around).

at the end of those two weeks, he briefly resumes his usual breakfast appointment with keiji (a twice-a-week tradition they started during kei’s freshman year). but then kei comes to realize, with slowly growing horror, as he watches keiji enter the café with kuroo tetsurou in tow on a supposedly usual tuesday as he sat in their usual spot, this wasn’t anything that he expected.

he thought, that when he’d picked up kuroo tetsurou from the airport, that would probably (well, he _hoped_ ) be the end of it. he hadn’t really intended on letting himself be involved as he was in the past. kei may be stupid, but he wasn’t _that_ stupid.

but kuroo tetsurou is there, with his stupid face and his stupid smile, sitting beside keiji and across him and kei insists to himself that this isn’t what he signed up for.

at the least, keiji gives him a small smile before explaining, “kuroo’s doing research in this university.” _god_.

kuroo is smiling as he peruses the menu and kei pretends to do the same (not the smile, though), even if he’s been here countless times and the staff probably already know what he’ll be ordering, if only to pretend to be preoccupied with something other than the person in front of him.

contrary to anything, kuroo tetsurou remains relatively quiet during the whole thing, chiming in only occasionally and mostly focusing on his food, and it remains _mostly_ like the usual breakfast. keiji tells him about orchestra practice, updates him on the current score they’re doing, then tells kei about bokuto’s training camp as well. kei proceeds to tell keiji about the meetings for the museum project and all his requirements.

it goes like that until keiji had to depart and go back to his university, leaving kei behind, but also kuroo—who no longer had a reason to follow after keiji, or kei, for that matter. but he settles beside kei as they walk out of the café.

“how did your midterms go, kei?”

he hums, “good.” kuroo smiles at that and remains quiet until they enter the building where his class would be held.

“what’s your next class?”

“archaeological theory.”

“oh! that sounds interesting.”

“hmm.”

“are you free for lunch? want to get them together?”

when kei turns, he sees kuroo looking at him with hopeful eyes, his smile gentle and unimposing. he blinks.

“sorry, i already agreed to get lunch with some members of the student council.” kuroo, as kei expected, merely smiles, eyes not betraying anything to him.

“alright, then next time. see you later, kei.”

kei watches kuroo smile for the final time before turning to walk away. his steps are unhurried, if not relaxed, both of his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. he bumps into someone before exiting the building, however, and kei watches him fumble slightly, bowing to the person before murmuring something inaudible, which was most likely an apology, before leaving.

when kei himself turns away to enter his classroom, he realizes kuroo had walked him all the way to his class even if his department wasn’t in the same direction.

**a memory:**

(they were a strange group of friends. _no_ , not so much strange as they were unlikely.

bokuto and kuroo were challengers, all their energy directed towards openly pursuing whatever it was the world had to offer. bokuto found it in volleyball, kuroo found it in the laboratory.

whereas keiji and kei were thinkers, they turned inwards as a default—always, _always_ thinking—sometimes, kei thinks he could spend a lifetime just remaining inside his own world, but that only makes it harder to do anything else other than think, and keiji is just as similar. so, they turned thoughts into music, into craft, into tangible things so that people could understand.

and yet, somehow, it worked. somehow, it was perfect in their own little way. once.)

kei learns what affection is through bokuto, kuroo, and keiji.

it originally stems from bokuto, whose love language is physical touch. he reaches out with his hands to keep people warm, warmer than anyone else kei will ever come to know and will make you feel safe. whenever he sees kei, he wraps his arms around him in a warm hug, but never too tight, never too long, never too much.

kuroo wasn’t so much touchy as it was him being naturally attuned to bokuto, who he’s been with the longest. it’s easy for him to just be in contact with people, and he spends years and years easily taking kei’s hand in his every time they were together, long before the both of them even realized what could be between them.

keiji is less intrusive than bokuto, but kei thinks that he also likes expressing his affection most using small gestures of touching. he kisses kei’s forehead on occasion, praises kei with pats on the head for a job well done, caresses his face softly to be able to read how kei’s feeling, and asks, always, if everything is alright in all aspects of the word.

kei has grown used to them, and even invite it on occasion, although he never initiates them. he likes long hugs and cuddles in bed, being pat on the head and being invited in a hug, he appreciates toffees in his pocket and a friendly tug into a conversation—he supposes he likes feeling warm most of all.

it’s not always like that, however. there are days when touching is difficult, when the thought of having his skin touching another’s sends a weird, bad feeling in his chest that just makes it a little difficult to think, sometimes breathe. on those days, he flinches and withdraws and feels just a bit wary the entire time he has to think or feel. on those days, bokuto and keiji (and kuroo, too, before) would sit with him in his bedroom, doing their own thing in comfortable silence, and somehow, that would be enough.

_you comiiiiin’?_ a message from bokuto through keiji’s phone comes twenty minutes away from the station.

 _i think i have half an hour left,_ he replies.

_okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_oh! kuroo’s coming today!_ comes ten minutes before his arrival to the apartment. and admittedly, he feels the ground tilt around him a little after having read it.

 _okay,_ he replies before tightly clenching onto his phone and putting it back in his pocket.

kei arrives to their doorstep feeling a tiny bit winded, everything is the same but also all the different.

bokuto is the one who opens the door but unlike usual, he’s too preoccupied with talking about something regarding a volleyball tournament on tv to an audience in the living room—kuroo tetsurou—to greet kei with anything more than a “tsukki!” before going back into the living room.

kei is already familiar with keiji and bokuto’s apartment; he’s spent a lot of his time there because both of them always invited him over. he knows where to put his shoes and knows where to find his own slippers; he knows there’s a small marking on one of the walls where bokuto habitually sends his volleyball flying until keiji catches him doing it. but still, it’s different when bokuto goes back into the living room before kei can even remove his shoes.

“hey, kei!” kuroo greets when he enters, and kei nods back before heading straight into the kitchen.

“nope,” keiji says as a greeting when he looks up to see kei entering.

“i’m not touching anything,” kei complains, leaning on the countertop and crossing his arms.

keiji pauses to look at him and smiles kindly, sticking his tongue out in momentary teasing before focusing back to cooking.

“do you really cook every night these days? why don’t we order takeout?”

“bokuto and i stay out late enough times in the week that i don’t have to,” he replies, laughing slightly, “he cooks too, sometimes, but i can’t trust him to save your palette when he gets a little crazy on experimenting. and how could i ever entrust takeout food if it’s for you, kei?” kei merely raises a brow.

“just let me be.” he says again, laughing. sometimes, kei admits to himself that keiji sounds almost exactly like his brother. he doesn’t know what to do with that information yet.

the dinner is pretty loud, much louder than usual, because bokuto and kuroo always have a lot of stories to tell and a lot of ways to make it crazier than it actually was. they always complimented each other well, one reaction from another triggering another, likely bigger, reaction from the other.

“…i thought i was going to die, the slope was literally so steep we were lying horizontal on the car ride up!”

he spots keiji laughing once, twice, and a little more—like always, like it had always been. and for a moment, kei takes a mental step back and sees that this is almost like three years ago; that if kei chose to place himself in it, if he laughed, listened to the voice inside his head, and allowed himself to open his mouth and retort _that’s impossible_ on whatever crazy story kuroo and bokuto are talking about before cracking a small smile, _if he_ —but he doesn’t.

because when fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen-year-old kei laughed, his eyes were always looking at kuroo tetsurou; because when he refused to take kuroo’s postcards from keiji’s hands even when keiji never stopped asking and when kei stopped talking (albeit only momentarily) to both bokuto and keiji after breaking up with kuroo to spare himself from the idea that they, too, would walk away from him eventually, it was to acknowledge that he was cutting off this one part of his life to live another one without one of the two things he thought he’d always live with. it was him letting go just as asked.

but if he placed himself back in the position of the person that he was three years ago, then what will have these past three years been for?

so kei takes a bite of the food keiji made and stays quiet.

kuroo is there again the next week, and the next after that. and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this was going to be a permanent thing. in retrospect, what did kei even expect? of course, kuroo tetsurou was going to be actively involved in keiji and bokuto’s life, probably even more than kei was. he was always good at taking care of his friends and everyone was always happy to have him around.

 _but_ , he thinks as he enters the apartment to bokuto and kuroo playing on the game console, as kuroo sets the plates on the table, as keiji sits next to him and watches them converse about anything and everything, as they talk about this concert kei didn’t have any idea about, as they all laugh together as though… as though—

some part of kei, the childish part, maybe—the one that always held onto his brother’s hand, the one that clung onto his mother’s cooking, the one that wished for things to just turn out alright—thinks, _the dinners were mine._

when kuroo left, kei was entirely certain that when push came to shove, it was kuroo that keiji and bokuto would have stuck with. it wasn’t anything self-deprecating, nothing extraordinary—it was only that if it were kei, he, too, would have chosen to stay with kuroo.

but instead, bokuto and keiji had chosen the both of them. they took kei under their wings and continued to support the things that he did; the concerts and competitions became museum exhibits and research conferences, the late-night practices became weekly dinners, the banter became everything—a reprieve, a momentary allowance to stop and breathe—at each point of the week whenever he came to their apartment. it was _his—_ in the years that has passed since stripping himself of everything that he _was_ , kei hasn’t claimed anything his except for _this. and yet._

why does it feel like he’s losing his place?

“…kei?”

kei flinches away from the touch on his forearm as though burned and finds himself blinking up at keiji, who had just finished cooking the food.

he sees keiji look visibly taken aback by his reaction and he takes a slight step forward, although it only serves to make kei withdraw even more as he took an instinctive step back.

keiji’s eyes soften, although they do have a hint of concern in them as well, “you alright?”

kei feels all the tension slowly trickle out of his body at the question, stripping him of his thoughts and leaving him with only the fatigue. he lets all of it go and rubs his face before leaning on the countertop, “yeah.”

he stays quiet for the rest of the night, although it isn’t any different from the last few weeks. he doesn’t miss the momentary glances keiji addresses him with although he doesn’t acknowledge it. when bokuto and keiji drive him home for the night, he remembers to tell them about his midterms and how he wouldn’t be dining with them in the next three weeks that followed.

he lets bokuto pull him into a hug when he also tells them they don’t need to bring him right to the door, if only to assure keiji he was finally fine, even though he ends up pulling away quickly, instinctively crossing his arms in front of him to draw a line between them—keiji’s eyes probe and when kei glanced at bokuto, he could see that the older, too, was beginning to realize just what was happening.

instead of saying anything to defend himself at the silent accusation, he takes another step back and bids them goodnight.

slightly bowing his head as goodbye, he murmurs, “see you in three weeks,” and walks away.

kei blinks his eyes open and looks to the side where his alarm clock sat. _4:40 am_ , it read. his alarm clock doesn’t ring until 6:30 but he sits up regardless. he turns, swinging his legs so that his feet were resting on the floor. for what would seem like a long moment, he merely stares at the ground. a moment later, he scoffs soundlessly, contemplating how it felt like he hadn’t slept at all. then he began reaching out to the side blindly, looking for his glasses and putting them on quietly.

he pulls himself up to wash his face and brush his teeth, walking to the bathroom. from the back of his head, the things he has to do today begins listing itself in his head mentally, even if unprompted: _written exam today, paper due in two days still isn’t done yet, another written exam tomorrow, two more exams after that._

he blinks blearily, the act bringing him out of his stupor as he notices he’d only been staring at his sink idly. he looks up at the mirror and sees sunken eyes and a pale pallor ( _get out into the sun more, tsukki! bokuto’s voice echoes in his head)_ , his brown eyes are dull and even as he looks at himself, it almost feels like he’s merely looking through. he looks down at his hands, picks up the toothbrush and thinks, _must’ve wasted a good ten minutes._

as he exits his bathroom and enters the living room, the clock on the wall reads _5:10 am._ he spots his notes on the coffee table where he’d left it a few hours before. they beckon him over so he brings them into his small kitchen, reading over them as he made himself coffee. _kei, watch it on the coffee. it might get you sick again._ his brother’s voice echoes in his head. today, and for the coming week, kei thinks it justifiable enough, given his personal reasons, that he ignores it.

he moves to his balcony just as the sun is about to rise, leaving his notes on the coffee table and clutching his coffee mug as he leaned on the railings, letting himself breathe just a while. the wind is cold as it grazed his skin but kei dismisses it, letting it prick him as he gazed forward, watching the world slowly come alive.

 _have you thought of what you wanted to do for your internship? i was considering sending you abroad, you have a lot of potential, tsukishima. i could recommend you to a museum in new york._ kei’s hand twitches at the side, his thoughts straying towards a similar conversation in the past he neither wanted to have anymore nor had the right to ever reconsider.

_have you thought about what you wanted to do in the future, kei? how about studying abroad? you have a lot of potential; you might want to try studying in a music institution outside of japan?_

funnily enough, even as both of those conversations intended different things, kei feels as though he’s back in square one. all the same, the world is leading him right into this foreign space as if he was meant to be tied to it.

for just a few moments longer, kei lets himself take in the scene of the sun illuminating the world, letting himself bathe in the light and wonders if, on the event he held his hand out and _tried_ to reach for the sun, would the world stop feeling so cold? but it rises and sets every day and it’s been years, but everything is still cold. like kei’s world is on a standstill, frozen over, never moving forward—somewhat (that’s how it felt, a lot of days). _stupid_ , kei thinks to himself, smiling wryly, before heading back into the apartment. he doesn’t look back at the rising sun, there was no use to. _there’s no time for silly thoughts like that. just,_ he bites his lip, _keep walking like you always have._

almost immediately, he’s reminded of all the things he has to do and the little time he has to actually do all of them. it makes his head feel cluttered and muddled, turning everything even duller than they were moments ago. internally, he laughs at himself, _it’s only half past five, idiot._

he closes his eyes and rubs his temple, blinking unsteadily as he picks his notes back up. _more coffee_ , he supposes to himself (would be the solution), standing up to fill his mug again.

it is exactly 6:30 when his alarm clock rings from inside his bedroom, he gets up from the couch to turn it off, heading straight for the bathroom to take a shower. it takes all but ten minutes, maybe longer.

it takes him shorter to pick clothes—a dress shirt, slacks, long coat. he picks up his headphones and his backpack from his study table as he walks out the door of his bedroom.

as he wound a scarf around his neck at the entryway, he glances at the frames hanging on the wall beside where he stood; a picture of him and his brother during kei’s high school graduation (his brother’s arm hangs around his neck as aki grins while kei sends a small, reluctant smile at the camera) hangs next to a picture of him with bokuto and keiji on the first shrine visit a year ago (in this one, he’s laughing while keiji grins widely and bokuto pouts at the camera). _kuroo’s not there,_ his mind notes, even if unasked for. kei waves the thought away and moves past the threshold.

(there are more frames in his old bedroom at home.

inside the drawers of his study table rests a family portrait of him, his brother, and his parents when he was eight and had just started competing in concours. the one that hangs in the living room was a family portrait of when akiteru had just graduated from university.

another portrait is of him with his brother during their first duet together in a concert at nine, another is of the day when he, kuroo, bokuto, and keiji ran around with paint all over their faces, another of all four of them in kuroo and bokuto’s graduation, then keiji’s, then kei’s.

another graduation picture of his rests there as well—the one with kuroo tetsurou’s hand resting quietly on the dip of kei’s back as though it was meant to be there. for once, kuroo was smiling at the camera calmly, standing properly—embodying how he’d grown up in his two years in university, but at the same time, presenting almost clearly the difference it would’ve made if they were still together at that point in time. at the time, they hadn’t told anyone yet and kei remembers naturally gravitating towards kuroo’s touch even when he was no longer meant to. all the while, his mom, brother, keiji, and bokuto smiled at them fondly, thinking they had all the time together to remain like this. only that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

kuroo leaves. kei quits the cello and stashes the frames in his drawer before moving to tokyo. and then they relearn how it is to live without the other.)

 _ah,_ he thinks as he steps out of his apartment and into the cold air, the door clicking close in the background. he tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat, puts on his headphones, and stares out at the sky, exhaling softly, _i miss home._

and just like that, the day begins.

as he walked further and further away from his apartment, he began counting the hours that he had left before he could climb back into bed, stare into his ceiling and rest, somehow, in whatever capacity the world would offer him.

the week moves past kei in a blur of white papers, blank ink, and rows and rows of books. after he submits his last required paper to his roman history professor at noon, he receives a message from keiji less than an hour later.

 _how were your exams? bokuto made an arrangement for a dinner at a pub later this evening with the others. will you come with?_ he asks.

_with who?_

another message comes just a bit later, _ARE YOU DONE WITH EXAMS!!!!! DINNER LATER WITH EVERYONE!!!!!!!_ kei ignores that.

a beep. _sawamura, iwaizumi, and everyone else. tobio’s coming too, i heard._

 _okay, see you._ he settles as a reply.

 _YESSSSSSSSSS!_ another message beeps from bokuto, even if unprompted. kei rolls his eyes, smiling slightly.

his midterms coming to a close seem to put things back into its proper place, _mostly_. kei heads back to his apartment and takes a long nap before waking up just an hour shy of the dinner. it takes him a few minutes to shower again, and by the time he’s done, the sun has already set and the moon has taken its place in illuminating the sky.

his phone beeps and kei grabs his coat and scarf before exiting his apartment.

as he takes out his phone to check the message, a car horn beeps by the front of his building.

 _need a—_ “ride?” kageyama tobio sits on the driver’s seat of his own car, mimicking the message he sent just a few minutes ago to the same person he’s speaking to.

“you thought to ask me by messaging but you’re already here. defeats the purpose of the message, don’t you think?” kei says as he settles in the shotgun seat, wearing his seatbelt.

“you weren’t going to reply anyway.” the younger replies as he changes gears, moving out of the parking and into the road. quietly, kei turns his attention outside the window but doesn’t fail to notice the way tobio is tapping on the steering wheel on a consistent beat even when the radio was off. an old habit.

“new score?” he asks, although he doesn’t check to see the other’s reaction.

“…yeah,” he replies. “want to—”

“maybe later.” _hear it?_

from the reflection on the mirror, kei doesn’t miss the way tobio frowns a little before it clears away, then the younger nods, “alright.”

the rest of the ride is spent in silence. because tobio and kei can only communicate in music, but while tobio has already gotten his music to take on the form he’s always wanted it to become, kei has long walked away from his. and so, it is silent between them. kei supposes there is nothing left to say (and yet tobio continues to drive him to get-togethers anyway, even if unasked; continues to write music for him, even if unasked. continues to wait, even if unasked).

**a memory:**

if there was anyone before keiji, bokuto, and kuroo—it was kageyama tobio.

he and kei weren’t friends. far from, the both would have argued. tobio would insist kei was his rival but kei insists there’s no such thing as rivals in real life. nevertheless, tobio’s piano, kei’s cello, and their families stand testament to the many times they performed together only to end up trying to overpower one another. they’ve only managed to perform well together once, and that was during practice—until it came to a point their teachers gave up trying to get their two outstanding students to perform a duet and instead gave each of them a solo.

if anything, although kei would never admit it, tobio was the second person to ever drive him forward after his brother. so, they could be nothing, tobio would insist, if not rivals.

nevertheless, it is kei who helps tobio with cello when he tries to pick that up, too—on top of everything else he started trying out at age ten. tobio is something of a genius, kei figures, as the younger starts composing orchestral scores before they could even step foot into high school.

a lot of tobio’s scores are written for kei’s cello and most of kei’s recordings are of tobio’s scores. they weren’t friends, no, and they can’t stand together in a room long enough to prevent each other from fighting but their craft spoke for themselves and for a long time, that worked.

even if tobio didn’t attend the same high school, even if kei attended less and less competitions, even if one thing broke in exchange for something else, even if kei said he wanted to stop competing for now—tobio figured everything would be just fine.

but then tobio comes and goes. and the next time he’s back, kei has already left the cello behind. and he doesn’t understand, not really, how kei could say one thing but do another. kei says he’s quit the cello but cleans it as frequently as he used to, as though it will only be a matter of time until he comes back—it’s been three years. he refuses to attend competitions and concerts but still notices the way tobio still taps a beat with his fingers on a random surface whenever he’s started on a new score (as if kei doesn’t do it himself every so frequently).

tobio doesn’t understand the roundabout way kei insists he’s done but also remains to be waiting still, for something even tobio doesn’t know what.

how could kei be the ghost that haunts himself?

they arrive to dinner just in time. everyone is rowdy and it’s just a bit too loud for someone who’s spent the last few weeks practically living in the library. nevertheless, he gets separated from tobio and gets diverted away from approaching keiji, the two being his quietest companions, as oikawa tooru pulls him in with an arm around his shoulder and proceeds to drag him into a conversation about volleyball with iwaizumi and sawamura—because god forbid bokuto and oikawa ever talk about anything else.

somewhere in this crowd of people, kei knows kuroo is also present but he doesn’t turn to look around. he swallows and lets the noise trickle in and out of his ears as he tries to listen to the discussion about olympic volleyball.

it takes one, two, three cocktails, and two straight shots until kei considers himself redeemed enough.

and given everything the past week, kei figures he deserves a little break. so, he withdraws from the group, now oikawa-less and the conversation turned towards horse racing, and exits the pub, crouching by the front. he takes a cigarette out of his pocket and ignites it with a lighter before gazing up at the night sky.

“i didn’t know you smoked.” of course.

“a lot of things change fast, kuroo,” he responds, puffing out a smoke without turning to look. kei convinces himself it’s because of the buzz in his head that he allows himself to speak without thinking it through, “especially when you’re not there to see it.”

kuroo is silent for a while— _retreats_ , kei’s mind notes viciously, as if that was a bad thing; as if kuroo tetsurou not telling him what he’s thinking in the frank manner he usually did back when they were much younger was a bad thing. _well, you didn’t let me,_ kuroo would have said. except this version of kuroo tetsurou has chosen to be silent.

“you don’t play the cello anymore,” he comments instead, as though that was a better point of conversation. (kei would have laughed if it were anyone else, or shut it down completely. but this time, even after everything, he feels something get stuck in his throat, almost as though it would just be _wrong_ to not answer.)

“you didn’t know?” kei asks, raising a brow as he turned to look at the older. because that was unrealistic, especially for the both of them.

he watches kuroo fumble a little, “no,” feels somewhat guilty for feeling something akin to pleasure when he watched kuroo struggle—even if it didn’t measure up to the intensity of what kei feels, felt, _feels_ whenever confronted by his former lover _—_ “i, i know you quit competing and performing. but i heard from keiji you’ve never played again since—in,” kei looks away. _since i left,_ “…in the last three years. not even just among friends, or by yourself.”

the music he used to practice for days on end still echoes in his head sometimes, he finds himself tapping to the beat of an absent melody when he studies in the library and the few vinyl records that he has of his favorite classical musicians are still inside his study drawers, aged but well-kept. kei is still able to point out which people are musicians in a crowd of people. kei stripped himself of everything that he was at nineteen but learned to pick himself up and began to understand who he could be at twenty.

kei could have said _no_ , _i didn’t abandon it_ , because that’s how everyone seems to have perceived his actions to be when he made that decision three years ago, _i grew up_ , he could have said. _people have to stop trying to conjure up a ghost of the person i was all those years ago when i’m right here, i’m still here,_ but instead, frustration bubbles underneath his skin and festers.

because the fact that kuroo tetsurou is right in front of him asking these questions _hurt_ in a way kei had never imagined himself hurting, because he wants, wants, _wants_ to rip apart whatever it is that remains between the both of them; whether this is to pull him impossibly closer or to shut him out, kei doesn’t know, but he _wants_ this intangible festering in his heart to go away and chuck it into a place far, far away from him—even if that meant, even if that meant hurting kuroo.

so instead, he says, “and what’s wrong with that?”

kuroo flinches slightly, only because kei has probably never been so closed off and defensive upfront, not from him. but things change, especially when you’re not there to see them.

he blows out the last of his smoke and in kuroo’s silence, almost like another _thunk_ in the head, sobers up just a little. _don’t do that, kei, don’t hurt him. look at you, twenty and one and you’re still—_

“i didn’t mean that,” kei begins again, voice quiet. because god forbid that he allows anyone to hurt kuroo, even if what remained between them were just tattered remainders of the past, “you don’t owe anyone anything for the decisions you make. it did you good to be able to reach your dream. every single one of us are just inching towards who we have to be based on the decisions we made. you made yours, i made mine, and we stood by what we decided on and here we are now.” _i don’t need you to save me from things i can’t handle anymore._

then he stands up to go back into the pub, moving past the older.

“i want to stay in your life, kei,” kuroo blurts out, and there’s a hint of desperation in the tone of his voice. kei finds himself pausing abruptly and it’s pathetic how he feels himself cave in almost immediately even as he pretended (to himself) to stand his ground. “i want to be here, in whatever form you’ll allow me.”

kei turns, hoping nothing on his face gives anything away. he could have said _it’s not easy_ , or _that’s a bad idea_ , or _i’m finding out i might have changed some, but all the parts of me that loved you three years ago are still the same and have just been waiting to come back to you_. instead, he looks at the earnest expression on kuroo’s face, the way the moon casts him in a light as though he could be— “you can try.”

 _everything._ ~~because ultimately, that was what he was, what he had always been.~~

_okay._

kuroo’s smile is warm as kei turns away to go back into the pub. kei tells himself it’s merely because he’s too bundled up that he feels too warm in his coat and scarf, the alcohol hadn’t helped either. it was far too warm and kei’s cheeks and hands were a testament to it, but that’s only because of the clothes and the alcohol. only because of that.

**a memory:**

(when he was in first grade, the school hosted ‘hero day’ and tasked every student to bring a photograph or a figure of their hero on the day of. he remembers the power rangers on the desk, superman, batman, spiderman, wonder woman—he remembers bringing his brother’s picture.

his classmates say they love their heroes because they could shoot lasers from their eyes, shoot cobwebs everywhere that could tie even a ship together, and save citizens, a city, and the world.

he remembers that once, during a particularly bad storm, his brother stayed up with him and played songs on the piano to mute out the roaring of the thunder even if he and kei had a small fight earlier that day.

he remembers that once, his brother’s friends had come over and they told kei stories when aki wasn’t looking—aki was the tallest in their class, they’d said, and that made it so that he was always protective of them even without being asked to—and remembers how they beamed at him when kei told them his brother was his hero. they’d said, “i think that’s a really, really great idea, kei-chan.”

he remembers his brother playing for everyone in a large music hall and how his music took everyone off their seats, applauding; he remembers his brother’s music enveloping the huge hall in warmth. he remembers his brother taking his hand on the way home, thinking a hero didn’t need to save the world, they only needed to be able to keep the people they love warm.)

for a long, long time, the center of kei’s world has always been his brother.

which is why, when kei finds out aki quit the piano almost an entire year after he decided on it. it comes off as a shock. perhaps he was too arrogant, too certain of who he was and where he stood that he didn’t think everything he stood for and believed in would lead up to a point where aki would stop dancing to his music or playing to his own.

and it wasn’t so much as it aki actually quitting as it was kei realizing he was the one who kept anchoring his brother to the piano. how long did akiteru keep from chasing after what he wanted just so he could keep up appearances in front of kei and act like the hero kei insisted him to be?

how long are you able to hold onto something and pretend you love it until it takes you by the neck and begins to choke you itself?

but even then, akiteru couldn’t tell kei—not because he didn’t love him, but because, because maybe he believed the only reason kei loved him was for his music. and at the end of it all, aren’t the facts plain and simple? kei was the one weighing his brother down all this time.

so when aki stopped taking kei’s hand in his and walked away, kei let him.

akiteru had only just turned eighteen then, kei, twelve, and tetsurou, fourteen. akiteru goes off to college and it is kuroo tetsurou who takes his hand and holds him together as though he could (and he did) after what was already seemingly _everything_ crumbles apart right in front of them.

tetsurou reaches his hand out, every day, for the next months and years to follow. he learns to change the strings of the violin and how to tune the cello, learns how to dance to the songs aki and mom used to dance to and rope both keiji and bokuto in as well.

tetsurou learns, so kei learns too. he learns to play the cello by himself, to take it one day at a time, to celebrate his triumphs even when the hero he aspires to be has learned to be something else entirely and is somewhere else entirely. kei learns to take tetsurou’s hands, pace himself, and breathe.

the way kuroo chooses to settle back into his life is not entirely obstrusive. he begins getting lunch in the same table as kei every wednesdays and fridays, after kei’s acceptance, and began to attend the dinners only every other week in the weeks that followed after their talk in the pub. rather than moving closer, it seems that he was moving according to how he knew kei would be comfortable.

and honestly, that was fine, that was great. if kuroo tetsurou thought the most he could get out of kei was being able to spend time with him only once in a while, then it was better for the both of them. besides, how free could a biomedical engineer graduate student even be?

which is why, maybe the world—maybe kuroo (kei doesn’t know how but he considered accusing him anyway), supposes at one point, that that wasn’t enough as he finds himself needing assistance on one of his laboratory classes.

it takes one look at kei’s notes one morning and kuroo begins to go on a tangent about organic reactions kei can’t even begin to comprehend—and is reduced to watching (read: marveling at) kuroo speak in the same way he used to three years ago about everything that he wanted to be; kei takes a mental step back now, realizing that kuroo tetsurou might just already be the person his younger self wanted to become.

when kuroo’s ramble comes to a finish, it’s ten minutes before his next class. kuroo retreats almost immediately, smile coming off unintrusive again—instead of keeping quiet, kei nods, “teach me again later,” and gives him his contacts as he gathered his things, “message me,” another pause, “i’m not going to shun you even if you say anything offensive, kuroo. you don’t have to hold yourself back on my account. i thought we were trying to be friends.”

and then he leaves (and misses the way kuroo tetsurou cheers to himself).

it’s much easier afterwards. kei spends a good amount of time in the university library just listening to kuroo talk about lectures kei never understood. kuroo has a particularly persuading way of speaking. kei thinks, that if he spends enough time around the older, he’d be convinced the earth was flat if kuroo insisted it was.

spending time with him becomes easier and letting him settle back into kei’s life is also easier.

and then he insists on sending kei home every meeting after, or going to bokuto’s together whenever they finish late.

kei figures eventually, _because damn him_ , he could. it’s convenient, it works. so, he does.

it is much, much easier to let someone back into your life when they’ve always been part of it.

kuroo comes knocking into his apartment one night, a box of cake in one hand and a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars in the other.

“i found these glow-in-the-dark stars in my luggage,” he says as a greeting, entering and moving past kei to remove his shoes. “let’s install them on your bedroom ceiling.”

that night, kuroo lay on kei’s bed like he never left as he looked at the freshly installed stars sticking on the bedroom ceiling while kei watched from the doorway.

“depending on the night, you could actually view a few stars from the balcony,” kei says, if only to preserve what remaining sanity he has from the intrusion.

“yeah,” kuroo agrees, “but these stars don’t ever go away, kei. they’ll always be waiting back here for you. maybe you’ll be enticed to sleep here more often and earlier, then.” he teases, but something about the tone of his voice is different.

kuroo exhales and proceeds to take down his brother’s band poster, too, suggesting they put up one of kei’s jurrasic world posters instead if he still had them (he did). and then they ate the cake.

movie night ensues. and he and tetsurou bump elbows, laughing together and _so_ easily falling together and it is so, _so_ easy. and kei thinks it’ll be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

iii.

his mother comes to visit every month or so. less, if kei could convince her.

she has spare keys but knocks instead, knowing kei was already awake at this time in the morning. she smiles gently as he lets her in, hugging him as a greeting. he takes the bag she’s carrying into the kitchen, placing tupperwares of homemade food in the fridge as his mom leaned on the kitchen countertop.

“honey, i heard tetsurou’s back home.” kei freezes, only for a short second, before he resumes rummaging through the bag.

“hmm, we picked him up from the airport.”

“is he well?” he finishes putting it all aside, so he glances up at his mother. she’s looking at him with a gentle gaze, smiling softly, asking but not intruding. he smiles back, a little hesitant.

"he's great," kei says, and says nothing else. he lets the silence prove as a resonse and his mom smiles at him as though she understands him.

"have you both been in contact larely? he called me when he arrived back in japan," she informs him and kei fights down the urge to ask _why_ exactly, and instead nods quietly. she ruffles his hair and chuckles.

"alright then, love," she says, and nothing else.

when she leaves a few hours later, she pulls him into a brief hug and sends him a gentle smile.

“call more frequently, yeah? your brother misses you too.” he offers her another smile.

“yes, mom. take care.”

**a memory:**

kuroo tetsurou asks him out the summer before kei’s third year in high school with a ring pop and the dumbest things kei has ever heard come out of tetsurou’s mouth.

“you are the horse hair to my bow, i can’t play the cello without you—”

“you don’t even play the cello, te—”

“you are the dinosaur to my jurassic park.”

“dinosaurs are extinct.”

“…i wish to be the stars you look at at night before you sleep.”

“cree—”

“or just be beside you to hold your hand and keep you warm. i’ll hold your hand and keep you here because i know you’re destined for the stars. i’ll give you the world if you ask, pluck all the stars in the sky and put it in your hands. i’ll give you my heart too, if you wish.”

it wasn’t like that surely, perhaps, probably. memories prove to be tricky sometimes and kei can’t quite remember what it was that tetsurou said that had him falling into the older’s arms with a laugh and an okay, _okay_ , _okay_. _i love you, too_.

his exchange with his mom, albeit brief, puts kei’s entire life back into perspective. did kei really almost think he and kuroo could go back to how they were before?

kuroo texts him more frequently than any of his friends do and he hangs out with him more than any of the others as well.

so kei decides, as he stares out at the barely visible stars in the sky in his balcony the night his mother left, that this was a very, _very_ bad idea.

avoiding kuroo was fairly easy. their departments were relatively far away from one another and if kuroo tetsurou wasn’t attempting to find him, then they would never have to meet _at all_. but kuroo tetsurou is not only a graduate student from the biomedical engineering department, he was also kei’s childhood friend, also a mutual friend to keiji and bokuto and everyone else, and also apparently very, very adamant to talk to kei—who has been evidently avoiding him for almost a week.

he supposes that if he never explicitly says he doesn’t want to talk to kuroo anymore, the older wouldn’t understand. which is maybe why he finds himself having to converse with him after his final class that day.

kei ends up holding his arm to bring him out into the parking lot. the class ended particularly late at 8 in the evening and there were barely any cars left in campus at that time of night. he brings kuroo by his car and stops by it before turning to face him, silent.

“kei,” kuroo begins, and there’s _that_ tone in his voice again, “can we—”

“kuroo, i don’t think this is a good idea anymore.” he says firmly, decisively. because _kei, this whole thing is a very, very bad idea_. and something about kuroo’s expression makes kei’s heart ache and he quickly realizes that even _this_ might be a bad idea.

“did i do something wrong? did i overstep?” a pause. “kei, you’re not obligated to keep me in your life, but c-can you tell me why?” break, after break, after break.

and something familiar bubbles up in kei’s stomach, the vicious, _vicious_ anger. how could kuroo ask about what was wrong when _everything_ is _goddamn_ wrong?

“i was doing just fine, you know?” kei begins—poison in his mouth—even as the _thump, thump,_ thumping of his heart pounds loudly in his ears, even as kuroo startles, “until you walked through that door like you hadn’t broken my heart and my mother started asking about you again.”

he starts pacing and the thoughts follow through like wildfire. it is loud in his head and kei feels frantic and angry and hurt and _hurt._ and wants, wants, _needs_ to rip all of _this_ apart.

“why did you leave?” kei asks, the words he would never have said to anyone if they weren’t kuroo—and wasn’t that the most terrifying part?—heavy on his tongue, “why did you leave like that? how come you said you loved me one moment but made it look so easy to walk away from me? was i not worth keeping alongside your dreams? why didn’t you ask me to wait for you? _tetsurou_ ,” he swallows, “why did you turn away and refused to let me catch up to you?”

kuroo purses his lips, arms stationary on the sides of his body (never reaching out—not anymore), “you were going to meet _so many more_ people, kei. and i couldn’t keep you stuck with me, knowing there was an entire world out there waiting for you.”

later, kei would register these words with more clarity, understand that this was how the world worked, _see_ that at the end of the day, kuroo made decisions for the both of them which he perceived was the best for kei at that point in time, _see_ that when kuroo hurt kei by leaving him behind, he, too, was hurt by his own decisions.

but in that moment, kei laughs, body going incredibly still. _this was all for me?_

“are you mocking me?” he begins, and there’s this strange mechanism in his chest that is turning and making kei feel just a little bit delirious. _this_ , he thinks, must be what musicians feel when they’re at the height of their best performed pieces. he thinks he can perform a masterpiece right now; he thinks he can destroy the world if he wanted to. “so, you decided that you were just going to dump me and, and—” he feels breathless just trying to wrap his entire mind around the idea.

he’s so, so, _so_ tired and some unidentified part inside him feels like it’s breaking. it’s in this moment that he realizes, devastatingly, that he’s not angry, not even at all. only disheartened, only worn-out, only thinking back to all the times when he thought that all _those_ things that happened could have been because he was never worth fighting for and actually, _finally_ (although despairingly) getting the confirmation.

he’d been loved (this, at the least, used to be a fact kei had never disputed against), but at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough to have kuroo think he was worth keeping.

quietly (the silence is mocking in the way kei aches and he didn’t think it possible but that _hurts_ even more), he wonders why it hurt more like this, when he’d been faring well enough without him all these years, when he’d survived the break up so easily it was almost incredulous, hilarious even. why does it hurt now, when the fact of him leaving kei behind is only but mere memory? kuroo tetsurou is back, almost as though he never left—always just right beside him, reaching out. why does it hurt? why does it hurt? _why?_

 _“_ fool,” he berates himself quietly, laughing in despair. because you’re a fool. because you tried to convince yourself three years ago was the end of the line, and yet—and yet, you never really took any step forward to move past him. you waited even when you firmly told yourself he was never coming back. except he did and it hurts now because he told you the reason why he left you behind, he told you that he made a decision that you didn’t even realize you were subjected to live out without your permission.

_kuroo tetsurou took away your decisions from you like he promised he never would and it hurts because you love him anyway._

he rubs his face, all the energy seeping out of his bones and all the words receding from his tongue. he crouches down, crossing his arms on top of his knees and burying his head behind them. then he exhales softly a few moments later, turning his head towards the older, “did you really love me?”

a small, distressed frown makes its way to kuroo’s face and kei _aches_. even so, the words come out anyway.

“when you told me you were leaving, i thought that this, too—along with everything and everyone else—was something inevitable. everyone walked their own pace and if that meant you having to go ahead of me eventually as well, then it would be alright with me. so, we went on to walk separate paths from one another because i thought that was what you thought would have been best for you. but you’re telling me now that this was all for me, and if,” he swallows, “if this was all _for me_ , then how little did you think of my feelings for you that you decided to take away my decisions away from me? what made you decide that what you thought would be good for me… was better than me making my own decision about how we could have had our relationship play out?”

kei hates a lot of things, but being taken for a fool was at the top of the list.

“i was doing okay, you know? it was fine. no matter how anyone else perceived how i was living my life—all these invitations to live with keiji and bokuto, all these weekly breakfasts and dinners, all these monthly visits, all these things and how so many people in my life has so visibly looked like they’ve been walking on eggshells around me since i was eighteen, in fear of me just teetering towards a non-existent edge—all of that was something i accepted but i— _tetsurou_ , i was doing okay. and if i wasn’t, i knew i was going to be. i was slowly, but certainly getting myself together. at least, that’s how i saw it. but then you reach out your hand to me the moment you come back, and i can’t help but wonder why—with something so incredibly inane after years of trying to figure out how to _survive_ day after day _,_ why is it that when you held my hand again, it felt like i had so easily regained my sense of direction?”

(sometimes, i missed you so much it felt like i couldn’t breathe. when i lost my direction, you were always that one place i used to reference to know where i should be headed and losing you felt like losing a limb, like being stuck in the ocean with nothing else but a paddle and a boat. but i managed and i learned. i learned to fish and i made friends with the ocean and found myself loving the stars that i see whenever the sun descended every night. but then you come back and for a long moment, it feels like i was suddenly submerged in cold water. you take me back, feed me, and keep me warm—the warmest i’ve been since you left, as though the time without you could never compare to the time i exist with you—and it’s as though the world started spinning again just as naturally as it did before you left.

 _and what am i supposed to do with the simple fact that i seem to be unable to navigate the world safely without you?_ )

“why are you so easily _still_ the solution to everything?” _you’re no longer supposed to be._

he doesn’t stay to hear whatever it was the older would say in response to all the things he just uttered, he doubts he would have even if he stayed. his heart is pounding in his ears and the part in his chest where his heart is supposed to be feels incredibly hollow.

he doesn’t cry, no, he clenches his fists and rubs his eyes, but no tears ever come.

as he walks away, he thinks to himself, out of spite—and knows it doesn’t quite make sense but he does anyway—that he should have never let kuroo tetsurou back into his life in the first place.

**a rumination:**

kei thinks it must be very easy for other people to look up to people they don’t see.

when kei was three, and akiteru, nine, his brother would wake up at dawn, sometimes jostling kei—who was intent on sleeping in his bed—awake, just so he could bid their father goodbye. akiteru loved their dad. he would bid him goodbye every morning and wait for him to come home until the food is cold and didn’t taste good in the mouth or until mom tells him, ‘he’s not going home today, sweetie’ and akiteru reluctantly eats a few carrots from his plate. akiteru’s hero was dad, but, if kei were to be asked, his hero was his brother.

he didn’t particularly dislike his father, but neither did he love him any more than what was expected of him. kei doesn’t think it’s wrong, you can’t love someone you can’t really talk to about all the fun things that happen in your life like he does with aki, like aki does with him. but he learns much, _much_ later that it is exactly because you can’t touch them or ever seem to be able to catch up to them that you consider them your hero in the first place. but kei’s hero, at three and for the many years after, was the same person who held his hand on the way to school and shared all his toys with him. kei’s hero was his brother, not the power rangers in the drawers, not the superheroes on television, not the sculpted kings in museums, not dad.

kei supposes it’s very easy for other people to look up to people they don’t see. but kei grew up looking at only one, and he didn’t ever have to look anywhere else.

a hero is someone you aspire to be, and kei has only always wanted to be like his brother.

akiteru picks up the piano when their father buys him one when kei is four, which is why kei picks up the cello when he’s six. his mother liked to remind him that it was supposed to be a violin—because kei told them himself he was going to learn so he could play with his brother, and the violin was a good accompaniment to the piano; except kei had insisted on the bigger one with the sharp thing pointing towards the ground and that was everything from then. (perhaps even then, kei thinks, he was already destined to walk alone.)

he and aki also learn to play the violin as they grew up, if only to play the same instrument together when they felt goofy and happy and _happy_.

he spends the next years learning the cello, growing with it. his hands fill with callouses from pressing on the strings too long and his house is engulfed in a never-ending sound that sometimes prompts aki and mom to dance around the living room on bare feet. later, it is the thing that holds keiji and bokuto close—as they sway together in their high school’s music room—back when they still hadn’t known they would be able to hold onto one another even without it. much, _much_ later when it’s the one thing that keeps kei grounded on earth, when everything seemed to be flying further and further away from him.

akiteru quits the piano the summer before his last year in high school, although kei only finds out just a few weeks shy of his graduation. it wasn’t anything complicated, except for the fact that akiteru was figuring out who he was and who he wanted to be all on his own and that included leaving the things that needed to be left and reaching for newer things that aligned more with the stars akiteru was adamant on following.

even if that too, kei thought, meant leaving kei behind.

with him and kuroo, everything was natural. although he supposes everything always is, when it comes to kei.

he was on a road wherein everyone was always overtaking him. they come and stay for a while and then they leave, eager for their next adventure. kei has learned to walk his own pace.

kuroo had barged into his life naturally, with his booming laughter, he rested his hands on the shoulders of his friends, keeping them close to him and his heart, always open, _always open,_ and then he'd began walking side by side with kei at one point and just stayed there. that, too, felt natural.

kei had laughed with them, bokuto, keiji, kuroo. and then it was natural to fall into him and rise with him and be led towards the path he was taking. for a moment, even as he'd already spent so much time thinking he could trudge this paved road alone, kei felt like time was suspended in a place where only he and kuroo belonged, and would stay. kei was content with staying there, if it meant being by kuroo's side.

but kuroo was always bigger, always faster, always stronger. just like his brother.

so when he smiled at kei with the smile resembling his brother's goodbye as he moved forward into a life without kei, kei thought, this too, was natural.

“i’m going to study in germany,” he’d said. and along with it, “i think maybe we should stop seeing each other.”

it was only natural that people came into his life, stayed by his side for a while to laugh and cry with him, and then finally overtake him to live the lives they need to live while kei himself stayed suspended in time, trudging slowly until he reached the end of the line.

all of this, it was natural. it was _natural_. kei lets the world move its pace, even if that meant them leaving him behind.

iv.

his alarm clock rings. _6:30_. he turns it off and goes back to sleep.

his alarm clock rings. _6:30_. he turns it off and goes back to sleep.

his alarm clock rings _._ he turns it off and sleeps. his phone rings, he shuts it off.

**a memory:**

(it goes like this.

tsukishima kei knows what wanting is, contrary to people’s beliefs. he knows the desperation of grasping something just a tad far out of reach, he knows how it is to reach for something and take hold of air instead. he knows how to want, so viciously, so frantically it stings his skin and tastes like poison in his mouth—a disease so big, it eats him from the inside.

he knows the constant noise in his head that urges him to move, to do something—to hold onto the bow and stand on stage even just once more, to be given one more chance to prove there’s something more he could show, to apologize to his brother, to look at someone and want, so desperately, for them to stay by his side.

instead, kei practices control, like all the other times, like always.

kei knows the desperate want that takes the form of a dull noise on the back of his head like an old friend, knows the intensity of greed and how it gobbles you down and spits you back up until you’re worn out and at a loss of what to do. kei knows how to swallow his greed, knows how to clench his fists and turn the noise in his head into a sort of hum in the air that frames it as though it could be peace.

kei knows how to settle with being just there, with being the kid who doesn’t want too much but neither wants too less, kei can settle with closing the doors of the auditorium and walking away from the cello, with waiting for his brother and pretending nothing ever happened, with looking at someone and not wishing for them to stay by his side.)

kei doesn’t remember the exact day he started the cello but he remembers many other things. like the first time he performed on stage because he could never forget his first mistake, the next few ones, the first award—he remembers the exact day he first thought of quitting the cello.

he remembers staring at his hands and wondering what was wrong with him. how do you let go of the one thing you’ve always known to hold onto?

even so, he finds himself letting it go—in the same way he let his brother walk away, in the same way he could never bring himself to chase after everything that leaves—and kei admits, that even so, he only finds it natural that he take his cello out once in a while to clean it, to make sure it stayed tuned. for what? he isn’t exactly sure.

he admits that he’d stripped the cello of its purpose ever since he’d let it go, and kei admits that sometimes, _sometimes_ , he feels the same. like he could be nothing if he weren’t who he used to be. sometimes, he does wish to pick it up again in the same way he wishes he could’ve done things differently years and years ago. kei, too, has learned to admit that he loved—his brother, the cello, kuroo tetsurou. even so, _even so_ , kei is okay. kei has loved and loved and _stopped_. he has taken his own pace and has gone wrong and wrong and _wrong_. but even fools learn, even those in rock bottom eventually learn how to climb back up.

kei is okay. and if not right now, he will be.

kei settles back into his life the week after with the sort-of peace that comes with having grown up. he surrounds himself with all the workload, his upperclassmen joking around him as they preoccupy themselves with preparing the museum exhibit.

“how was your week-long break away from us, huh?” someone from the team nudges him teasingly, “you missed us, no?”

kei merely snorts as he continues typing things on his computer and another upperclassman gently flicks his forehead as they walk past.

“hope you’re doing fine, idiot.”

kei merely laughs, up until someone by the door calls him.

“kei, someone’s looking for you outside.”

it’s with that statement that kei finds himself talking to kuroo again. it’s different now, in the way he holds himself up, in the way he finds himself able to breathe in front of kuroo, in the way he lets himself think more clearly. in a way, the fact that kuroo was less a stranger—in the way kei had welcomed him in his life for a short bit makes things easier. this was kuroo after all, _no_? this was kuroo after all.

“when i look at you,” kuroo explains, almost as though he’d just been waiting to say this all this while. all that silence, broken apart. from where he’s standing, kei sees his hands tremble, “sometimes, it feels like i can’t breathe. this whole,” he rubs his face almost tiredly as he chuckles, “idea that you might one day decide you don’t need me in your life anymore strikes a visceral fear in me and i wish for nothing but to embed myself in your life to a point you wouldn’t know how to live it without me. and then sometimes,” his voice breaks, “sometimes, i just wish to see you smile, i just want to see you mold your world in the way you wish it become. but all the same, i _always_ want you next to me. sometimes, i realize my fear doesn’t lie in the possibility of losing you, but instead, it lies in the fear that the greed that comes with my loving you will someday mean depriving you of the things that will make you happy. so i let you go.”

“before i came back, i considered it, you know—i understood that you didn’t want me in your life anymore, at least not as close as we used to be. i told myself i had to live out the consequences of the decisions i made, even if that means not being able to reach out to you even when there were times when i looked at you and saw that you were so visibly hurting over something that happened in the timeframe i wasn’t there beside you. but then,” he laughs helplessly, “i saw you at the airport and all that—all that pretense of me holding myself back just disappeared and in the next second, i already found myself striding forward to just be closer to you. that part of me that wanted to monopolize you won over and i—in all my selfishness and before i could even think it through, i asked you to give me some space to be in your life again. even if my part in your life was done, i still wanted to squeeze myself into the narrative. i could say it’s because sometimes, i’m arrogant enough to believe that maybe i could help you figure life out in the same way we used to when we were still so much younger. i could say it’s because i just want to be close enough to see you smile and occasionally, maybe be the reason for why it’s there. but mostly, it’s because i just _want_ you, kei,” and he laughs, almost deliriously, “i love you.” _when i first saw you again, it was the first time in a long time that i felt like i no longer had to wait and hold my breath._

**a memory:**

when kei was nineteen, he found himself crashing and burning, this long process of waiting for it to come and it comes all at once.

kei had never been able to explain it to anyone, not even keiji—who had been waiting for the longest time as to the reason _why_ —merely because he could never explain it himself.

a cello case rests idly in the corner of kei’s bedroom, the instrument inside tuned every few days even if the player doesn’t really play anymore. kei had stopped playing the summer of his freshman year in university, although he did decide to quit many months prior and had already been contemplating it as early as the summer before his first year in high school, even if no one really knew. it was more of a habit by now—the act of tuning and maintaining it, almost as though there was still someone who would come back to it—a way to remind himself that if objects that are unused and left behind still deserve the kind of care and treatment he gives, then he also deserves to care for himself even half the way he treats his old cello.

but what he couldn’t explain was this. when kei was faced with the fact he had to hold onto the cello to _play_ it, he found the act in itself overwhelmingly consume him in inconceivable anger and frustration—the sounds of everyone moving about and chattering ringing in his ears, the memory of a cello falling from his trembling hands and onto the floor with a _crash_ , the way the sound of the bows just comes off _wrong_ the few months after graduation and the way he was _still_ trying but it somehow just didn’t work.

so, whenever someone asked, _why did you quit? why are you not in the orchestra? why are you not playing when you have so much potential?_

he clenched his fist, face forming into a small frown—his head hurt every time from the sheer intensity of this anger he himself can’t explain—keeps the internal voice screaming in his head and buries it in his chest (even if it hurts) by gritting his teeth and offering a close-mouthed smile.

“it was just a hobby, really. i didn’t plan on pursuing it professionally so i find that it’s more convenient for me to just focus on my studies now that i’m in university.” _liar, liar, liar, liar._

kei could tell you (and in all honesty) that he feels no urge to play the cello any longer. but it’s not because he does not love it, not really—you don’t take good care of something you do not love (although this is something that kei himself might not have realized)—it’s mostly because whenever he touched it to use it as intended, kei feels like his hands might burn, almost as though in the same way kei had tried to leave it behind, the music also turned its back on him.

even so, at twenty, he starts regaining his footing. because even as you let go of things that you used to perceive to be everything that you were, it was impossible not to find new places in this world to fit in.

kei had osamu, hana, keiji, bokuto, tobio (even as he was sometimes antagonistic), oikawa, iwaizumi, daichi, archaeology. even as his brother and him no longer held hands the way they used to, it was always, _always_ akiteru who made sure he was one of the first few people to come during museum exhibits organized by kei.

kei is okay. kei makes mistakes once in a while and he goes wrong and wrong and _wrong_ sometimes but he’s okay and sometimes, he goes right and right and _right_. and he’s learned to be okay. because isn’t that what growing up is?

iv.

kei meets up with his family once every month. he comes home to miyagi with his brother and his wife and they dine in their living room with their parents and it’s comfortable. he watches the way aki smiles as he talks about his life, the way a soft gentleness has settled on his face—it has always been there, but the years have managed to make him look even warmer—and thinks of the way how years ago, kei wouldn’t have understand that.

he always thought the life they lived were only encased in the concepts of heroes and music and the tapping of feet on the wooden floor of their home. but while akiteru has stopped dancing as much around kei, he probably takes his wife in hand and clutches her close before swaying to a music kei might or might never have gotten to listen to.

but even as akiteru and kei live such different lives now, akiteru still pulls him close, still loves him as gently as he did the first time he let kei into his bed after a nightmare. because kei learned that while love might change or take another form, akiteru’s love for kei was something that would never waver.

in the same way, kei learns to grow, learns to forgive, learns to love, learns to breathe.

kei, too, just as naturally, learns to live in the way he knows how to, in the way that works, in the way the world makes things work, in the way he could let himself take hold of something without feeling like he would always lose it. kei learns.

keiji brings him breakfast on a saturday morning. although it’s a poorly veiled attempt of a plan when bokuto appears just a few minutes later with a basket in hand and a sheepish kuroo tetsurou trailing behind him.

they go to a park, and it’s familiar for the first time in a long while in the way they all so easily fall into the companionship they’ve always had since they were younger. bokuto finds himself flying a kite with the kids in the playground, kuroo running after them as he laughed maniacally, in a fake attempt to steal the kite. keiji discreetly watches the two as he pretends to read a book and kei lies on the mat in perfect contentment, finding peace in just watching them do what they have always done.

“you alright?” keiji says at one point, while kei preoccupies himself with watching the clouds roll by, one strawberry fondue at a time.

he hums softly. _yeah_.

kei has counted his mistakes long enough to finally figure out how he could make things go right and right and _right_ , finally—maybe. and it takes a little bit of learning some more but when kuroo takes his hand in his in a bout of laughter, the vinyl player playing this song bokuto thought would be nice to give kei after he bought it in one of his trips during the world series, kei lets him bring him into a familiar dance they used to tap to when the world seemed to be caving in on him.

kei exhales and tetsurou sticks right next to him and the further they laugh into each other’s arms, the easier it is to understand how difficult it must be not to love someone like kuroo tetsurou.

life could be so incredibly complicated, and kei has lost and lost and lost his way but he’s figuring things out, one step at a time. just as everyone else is, no?

v.

it takes time, because when it’s kei, it always means patience, always means understanding.

when kuroo would usually take someone out to a restaurant every friday, he’d spend his fridays holed up in his apartment with kei, eating popcorn and sweets that make their teeth hurt while documentaries about deep sea creatures played on the television (kei asked him once if he’s afraid but he’d laughed, shaking his head no and kei settles with that, continues watching. kuroo doesn’t tell him it’s because he’s too busy looking at the blonde boy with long limbs to ever notice whatever it was that was on the television).

when kuroo would normally like to take naps in his apartment after classes are over, he’d spend his weekdays studying with kei in the library (he watches him wrinkle his nose over problems he didn’t quite understand, grin as he slightly nibbled on his pencil when he liked a certain paragraph or if he’d managed to answer a problem after scribbling for a long time, and then, _and then_ , his favorite part, on days when they sit by the window and the hues of the setting sun casts itself on kei and kuroo _could swear_ he wasn’t of this world—otherworldly, ethereal. an angel, _his_ angel. and dear, _dear god_ is he besotted).

and honestly, it’s kei’s fault because kuroo was taking his time. but _kei, dear heavens, kei_ had laughed, with the sun hitting his face just right as they sat together under one of the trees while kuroo tried to draw him. he barely remembers what it was he said that made the blonde boy laugh, except that he did and he was _so, so_ beautiful that kuroo forgot how to breathe and proceeded to speak before he could think.

“i love you.” _i love you, i love you, i love you._

kei’s laughter winds down into a soft, beautiful smile as he glowed and when he spoke, kuroo could swear it felt a lot like finally, _finally_ coming home.

“that took a while.” _i love you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> did you finish it? wow. thank you. this has been the longest thing i've written and i'm actually a bit emotional right now because i'm really not that proud of it. so if you enjoyed it anyway, thank you.
> 
> i started this off in a really excited mood because i liked this prompt, it was the first one i chose. but i crashed so many times in the process of writing this and i rewrote it so many times up until my classes started and i no longer had the time to edit or even finish it in the way i intended for it to end. it just makes me a bit sad because i know i could have definitely written this better. but if you enjoyed it, then, that's a win, right?
> 
> the vibe i made for it here was that i wanted to let people have a taste of what it felt like to be someone in their early 20s and just trying to figure life out. life throws us so many curveballs and it's just so very hard to deal with and it's just tiring. i hoped for this to give a glance at what it's like to try and live in the midst of all these feelings and struggles, and that everything will fall into place eventually. i wish i could've made it more romantic but it didn't end up much like that, i'd like to believe it's still nice to have gotten kuroo to be that companion that just wishes to support him anyway. 
> 
> someday. maybe someday, i'll write more on this au and you guys can see a bit more of them with akaashi and bokuto. in the meantime, i hope you accept this with a hug! stay safe. also, it's open-ended because their journey continues after this, heh. kei is only twenty-one, kuroo twenty-three. they'll be okay. we will be, too.


End file.
